yeah ... and I would claim that this urge of you goes in completely the wrong direction :-) my take is that the recent addition of \def:NNn and firends was already a mistake and should be reverted. These functions provide something which at the expl3 level isn't really needed. What is gained from having the alternative between \def:Npn #1#2#3 {...} and \def:NNn 3 {...} the former is much more general (and on expl3 level that generality is sometimes needed), I would claim it is easier to read as the # signs stand out better than a simple "3". it is a bit like the newcount newcounter discussion yeaterday ... \def:NNn is kind of an attempt to carry more or less "user-level" functions into the language and they don't belong there cheers frank -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Will Robertson Gesendet: Dienstag, 9. September 2008 17:23 An: [log in to unmask] Betreff: Re: tlp type On 10/09/2008, at 12:43 AM, Joseph Wright wrote: > Will Robertson wrote: >> >> \def:Npn \store_something: {Something} >> >> (I prefer it without the "0" argument spec.) >> > > I was wondering about this. For macros with no arguments, I was > thinking :NNn has the advantage that the second N is "seen", whereas > Npn has an invisible p argument. Yeah; if people start using "\def:NNn 0" a lot, I'd be pretty tempted to define a \def:Nn variant... W